When to use AgilePM?

Enabling a Project Management method means having useful guidance with all the processes necessary to successfully manage a project. The pivot is on the choice of the methodology to pick for our project:  the way of working and how to communicate with the team during all the project length depends from the methodology you chose to enable.

A Frequently asked question from our customer is:” When to use AgilePM? What kind of projects it fits?”

The kind of project you have to manage is the key to understand the methodology to use.
Let’s examine together some of the characteristics of the projects that are manageable with Agile methodologies:

• The characteristics of the final output aren’t completely known during your starting-up.
• Requisites could change or develop during the execution of the projects.
• Frequent changes are required.
• The user wants to receive some benefits before the closing of the project itself.
• The product to realize can create incremental business value.
• Your working environment is subject to continual change.

4 things to know before using Agile Project Management (AgilePM)

AgilePM is the one and only Agile methodology addressed to Project Management. It could be a good compromise between enacting a Project Management framework and putting into practice Agile principles.

The question is: “Is your team ready to enable AgilePM to manage a project?“

Below the 4 key points to successfully enact the methodology:

1. The business vision leading the project has to be clear enough and understood by all the project members.
   If the vision isn’t shared and understood within all the project members, the risk is to focus on details of low importance not enacting a good time-management. The Agile  Business Consortium suggests a simple question to be answered in order to understand if the activity we are performing is aligned with the strategic vision: “Doing this activity put me closer to the realization of our vision?”

2. All team members are aware that the project will be successful if and only if the product will be delivered respecting the criteria of acceptance and according to the agreed scheduling.
   In an Agile Project, everybody is focussed on the business drivers and on delivering on time. The pursuit of perfection is not recommended.

3. All project members accept that the requisites will be sketched during the initial phase and the details will be caught and defined during the development of the project
   Going in-depth with the definition of the requisites during the initial phases is very risky and it could end in a miscalculation: it doesn’t allow the development of the solution during the processes requiring an approach addressed to “change control”.What matters is that the team knows WHY the final solution is important (the scope and the benefit that the project will generate). So, be sure that the results catch the business exigencies not being a pre-fixed solution.

4. All the team members accept that change to requisites is unavoidable and only by accepting change is possible to deliver the right solution
   The development team has to accept change in order to deliver an optimal solution. The necessary changes have to have the priority on the overall workload.

Why these key-points are fundamental?

An Agile project is considered successful if respect the boundaries of time and quality. Is very important that the project team is aligned with these and the other criteria enlisted in the Project Approach Questionnaire (PAQ) developed by the Agile Business Consortium. It is a checklist comprising 17 bullet points which are very useful in evaluating if the Project Success Factors have a good chance to be fulfilled.

The answers to the PAQ will have an impact on how the project will be managed.

PAQ can help you to evaluate all the risks linked to the choice of a particular Agile method moreover, it can guide you to understand the risk linked to the overall project success.
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